DOCSLIB.ORG

VU Research Portal

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
VU Research Portal VU Research Portal On the publication date of Syntactic Structures Noordegraaf, J. published in Historiographia Linguistica 2001 DOI (link to publisher) 10.1075/hl.28.1.18noo Link to publication in VU Research Portal citation for published version (APA) Noordegraaf, J. (2001). On the publication date of Syntactic Structures. Historiographia Linguistica, 28, 225-228. https://doi.org/10.1075/hl.28.1.18noo General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. E-mail address: [email protected] Download date: 25. Sep. 2021 Historiographia Linguistica XXVIII:225-228 (2001) On the publication date of Syntac tic Struc ture s A footnote to Murray (1999) Jan Noordegraaf Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam In his 1975 preface to the publication of his 1955/56 The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory, Noam Chomsky told the following about the origin of his first book, Syntactic Structures: In 1956, at the suggestion of Morris Halle, I showed some of my lecture notes for an undergraduate course at MIT to Cornelis van Schooneveld, the editor of the Janua Linguarum series of Mouton and he offered to publish them. A slightly revised version appeared in 1957, under the title Syntactic Structures (SS). (Chomsky 1975:3) More recently, in an interview given in December 1996 at Maceió, Brasil, he presented a much more detached view on this historic event: At the time Mouton was publishing just about anything, so they decided they’d publish it along with a thousand other worthless things that were coming out. That’s the story of Syntactic Structures: course notes for undergraduate science students published by accident in Europe. (Dillinger & Palácio 1997:162-163) The historiographer seriously interested in the rise and the fall of the generative paradigm might wish to know when in fact the release of Syntactic Structures took place. An answer to this question was given by Murray in two recent articles (1999a, 1999b:264-265). These papers also deal with the publication date of Robert B. Lees’ (1922-1996) well-known 1957 review article on Syntactic Structures in Language, a piece that according to Chomsky (1975:3) came off the presses “almost simultaneously with the publication of SS”. Or, as it reads in Newmeyer’s retelling of the story: Early in 1957, Noam Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures was released by Mouton in The Hague. But it did not share the fate of most first books by unknown authors distributed by obscure publishers. Within weeks, Robert B. Lees’s review of it appeared in the journal Language. (Newmeyer 1980:19) As a matter of fact, the issue in which Lees’s review was published, was the third number (July- September 1957) of Language 33 (Murray 1999b:345). But when exactly was the release of the book that had been reviewed by Lees? Elsewhere in his Linguistic Theory in America Newmeyer (1980:35) notes: “By May of 1957, Syntactic Structures was off the presses”. However, at the authority of Peter de Ridder, the director of the publishing company, and Cornelis van Schooneveld, the editor of the Janua Linguarum series, Murray (1999b:345) states that Syntactic Structures “was published in November or December 1957”. To any informed Dutch linguist it has been a matter of fact that Murray’s contention could not possibly be correct. As was pointed out quite some time ago (Zonneveld 1982:205-207), Syntactic Structures was reviewed as early as 20 July 1957 in a Dutch daily journal, the Nieuwe Rotterdamse Courant, by Henk Schultink (b. 1924), who from August 1956 on had a linguistic 1 column in this newspaper. In the early 1960s Schultink was to be appointed Professor of General Linguistics at Utrecht University.1 The most important piece of evidence for determining the date of the publication of Syntactic Structures can be found in the 1957 volume of the Nieuwsblad voor de boekhandel, the weekly newspaper for the Dutch booksellers. In issue 7 of volume 124 of this periodical, Syntactic Structures is announced on page 129 in the rubric of recently published books; this issue is dated Thursday 14 February 1957.2 As a result, it must be concluded that Murray (1999b:345) is wrong in assuming that Lees’ review “has to have been submitted before Syntactic Structures was published”. What is correct is what Lees wrote to Bernard Bloch (1907-1965), the Editor of Language, on Friday, 22 February 1957, namely that Syntactic Structures was “released [...] just last week”. In the same letter Lees noted: “My review should be finished within a week or so, but I could send you a carbon of most of a preliminary draft”. Eventually, he submitted his review on 26 April 1957 (Murray 199b:346), and his article-length review received a prominent place in one of the next issues of Language.3 It seems safe to assume that Lees had (a copy of) Chomsky’s typescript of Syntactic Structures at his disposal.4 In this way Lees was able to prepare the review article he had talked about with Bloch when they met at an earlier LSA meeting (cf. Murray 1999b:345-346, for details). “I expect that there would have been little notice in the profession had it not been for a provocative and extensive review article by Robert Lees”, Chomsky (1975:3) remarked many years later. In 1957 his international career could start its high flight - with a little help of my friends. 1 Zonneveld rightly remarks that it was Anton Reichling (1898-1986), Professor of General Linguistics in Amsterdam and later on a fierce opponent of Chomsky’s generative enterprise, who - on 15 March 1957 - encouraged Schultink to study that “nice booklet”. Reichling was the Review Editor of Lingua, and as such he may have received a review copy of Syntactic Structures from the Dutch publishing house rather quickly. Following the professorial advice, Schultink requested a review copy from Mouton, which he received in May 1957. As I was able to check out myself, Schultink noted on the bastard title page of this copy: ‘May 1957’. I do not know whether Schultink’s review was the first review ever of Syntactic Structures. Note that Koerner & Tajima 1986 do not mention earlier reviews. 2 Unlike France, the Netherlands did not have a ‘dépôt légal’, so the listing in the Nieuwsblad should serve as the ‘official’ date of publication. 3 It is interesting to see that Zellig S. Harris (1909-1992) was informed about (the publication of) Lees’ review. In his paper “Co-occurrence and Transformation in Linguistic Structure”, which appeared in the same issue of Language, one finds in the first footnote a reference to Syntactic Structures, “reviewed by Lees in this number of Language” (Harris 1957:283-284). As John Joseph (Edinburgh) suggested to me, it is quite likely that this notice about the review appearing in the same issue was inserted by the Editor, Bloch. 4 Just as he had been “privileged [...] to read a first version of the larger work”, i.e. The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory (Lees 1957:375). On LSLT Chomsky recalled forty years later: “Initially, it was about 800 pages long and was completely unpublishable. It was only written for a few friends. My wife and I ran it off a mimeograph machine (there was no xerox at the time), making about 30 copies, and gave it out to a few friends who were interested in this strange topic” ( Dillinger & Palácio 1997:162). 2 REFERENCES Chomsky, Noam. 1957. Syntactic Structures. The Hague: Mouton. Chomsky, Noam. 1975 [1973]. “Introduction”. The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory by N. Chomsky, 1- 53. New York: Plenum. Chomsky, Noam. 1997. “Knowledge of History and Theory Construction in Modern Linguistics”. Chomsky no Brasil / Chomsky in Brazil: Revista de Documentação de Estudos em Lingüística Teórica e Aplicada (D.E.L.T.A.) 13, No. Especial, 103-122. Dillinger, Mike & Adair Palácio. 1997. “Generative Linguistics: Development and Perspectives. An interview with Noam Chomsky”. Chomsky no Brasil / Chomsky in Brazil: Revista de Documentação de Estudos em Lingüística Teórica e Aplicada (D.E.L.T.A.) 13, No. Especial, 159-194. Harris, Zellig S. 1957. “Co-occurrence and Transformation in Linguistic Structure”. Language 33:3.283- 340. Koerner, E.F. Konrad & Matsuji Tajima, comps. 1986. Noam Chomsky: A personal bibliography, 1951-1986. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Lees, Robert B. 1957. Review of Chomsky 1957. Language 33:3.375-407. (Repr. in On Noam Chomsky: Critical Essays ed. by Gilbert Harman Garden City, New York: Anchor Books 1974, 34-79). Murray, Stephen O. 1999a. “How The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory Didn’t Get Published During the 1950s or 60s”. The Emergence of the Modern Language Sciences: Studies on the transition from historical-comparative to structural linguistics in honour of E.F. Konrad Konrad Koerner ed. by John E. Joseph, Hans-Josef Niederehe & Sheila Embleton. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins 1999. Vol. I, 261-266. Murray, Stephen O. 1999b. “More on gatekeepers and Noam Chomsky’s writings of the 1950’s”.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Notes on the Development of the Linguistic Society of America 1924 To
    NOTES ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE LINGUISTIC SOCIETY OF AMERICA 1924 TO 1950 MARTIN JOOS for JENNIE MAE JOOS FORE\\ORO It is important for the reader of this document to know how it came to be written and what function it is intended to serve. In the early 1970s, when the Executive Committee and the Committee on Pub1ications of the linguistic Society of America v.ere planning for the observance of its Golden Anniversary, they decided to sponsor the preparation of a history of the Society's first fifty years, to be published as part of the celebration. The task was entrusted to the three living Secretaries, J M. Cowan{who had served from 1940 to 1950), Archibald A. Hill {1951-1969), and Thomas A. Sebeok {1970-1973). Each was asked to survey the period of his tenure; in addition, Cowan,who had learned the craft of the office from the Society's first Secretary, Roland G. Kent {deceased 1952),was to cover Kent's period of service. At the time, CO'flal'\was just embarking on a new career. He therefore asked his close friend Martin Joos to take on his share of the task, and to that end gave Joos all his files. Joos then did the bulk of the research and writing, but the~ conferred repeatedly, Cowansupplying information to which Joos v.t>uldnot otherwise have had access. Joos and HiU completed their assignments in time for the planned publication, but Sebeok, burdened with other responsibilities, was unable to do so. Since the Society did not wish to bring out an incomplete history, the project was suspended.
    [Show full text]
  • 1. Introduction
    A fox knows many things but a hedgehog one big thing Mark Aronoff Stony Brook University 1. Introduction Isaiah Berlin’s little book, The Hedgehog and the Fox (1953), takes its title from a line by the Greek poet Archilochus: πόλλ᾽ οἶδ᾽ ἀλωπηξ ἀλλ᾽ ἐχῖνος ἓν μέγα ‘many [things] knows [a] fox but [a] hedgehog one big [thing]’. Since it is impossible to do justice in a paraphrase to Berlin’s prose, I will quote the relevant passage in full: [T]aken figuratively, the words can be made to yield a sense in which they mark one of the deepest differences which divide writers and thinkers, and, it may be, human beings in general. For there exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a single central vision, one system less or more coherent or articulate, in terms of which they understand, think, and feel—a single, universal, organizing principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance—and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, only in some de facto way, for some psychological or physiological cause, related by no moral or aesthetic principle; these last lead lives, perform acts, and entertain ideas that are centrifugal rather than centripetal, their thought is scattered or diffused, moving on many levels, seizing upon the essence of a vast variety of experiences and objects for what they are in themselves, without, consciously or unconsciously, seeking to fit them into, or exclude them from, any one unchanging, all-embracing, sometimes self-contradictory and incomplete, at times fanatical, unitary vision.
    [Show full text]
  • An Approach for Teaching American English to Chinese Speakers
    DOCUMENT RESUME ED 038 625 AL 002 355 AUTHOR Tiee, Henry Hung-Yeh TTL7 An Approach for Teaching American English to Chinese F4eakers Rased on a Contrastive Syllabic ana Prosodic Analysis. PUB DATE Aug 67 NOT'? 232p.; Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Texas, August 1967 EDPS PRICE EDPS Price MF-$1.00 HC -1'11 .70 DESCPTPTOPS American English, *Contrastive Linguistics, *English (Second Language) , Interference (Language Learning), *Intonation, Language Programs, *Mandarin Chinese, Phonetic Transcription, Phonology, Structural Analysis, *Suprasegmentals, Syllables, Teaching Methods, Tone Lanauages ABSTRACT Pxperiments in language teaching have indicated +hat, especially in the case of teaching Pnglish as a foreign language, no pronunciation of English sounds natural unless the intonation (prosodic features) is fairly acceptable. Pven with satisfactory consonants and vowels, a phrase with incorrect melody still sounds foreign. On the other hand, when brief phrases are given proper pitch pattern, large errors in consonants and vowels seem much less important. English is spoken with a stress-time rhythm; the everyday speech of Chinese tends to he a polysyllabic language which often combines two or more syllables. The rate of utterance of a succession of syllables, unlike that of English is syllable-timed, the length of each syllable remaining approximately the same. Therefore, in teaching Chinese speakers to learn Pnglish, the shift from their tendency toward a syllable-timing rhythm to a stress-timing rhythm is very necessary. Consauently, syllable analysis in both languages must become a basic step in the learning process. This contrastive study of American English and mandarin Chinese examines the syllable structure and prosodic features of both languages and relates this analysis to language teaching.
    [Show full text]
  • 03188555-MIT.Pdf
    AUTOSEGMENTAL PHONOLOGY BY JOHN A. GOLDSMITH A. B. , Swarthmore College 1972 SUBMlTTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY at the MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF 1 TECHNOLOGY JUNE 1976 - - Signature redacted Signature of Authon •• ~~;~;~~~~. ~jJ/~;~j_~~- ~!~~;~~~;~;. ~~d 0· Linguistics, April 30, 1976 . Signature redacted _ Cert if1ed by ......................... -· ., ....... -.- ..,,..• .,. ,1 ... • • ... • • • • • • • • • • / ,,.--··· 1 Tbesis Superviso.,..r.,,,.,, Signature redacted Accepted by ••••.••••••••••••••.•• •1 ••••••••••• • , .•,. •.• -•••••- •••••••• Chairman, Departmental Committee on,Graduate Students P11.111Ill 3lhMW!IhI.jAiIl1 I!V#,- 2 Autosegmental Phonology John A. Goldsmith Submitted to the Department of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics on Apri 130, 1976, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. A modification of the theory of generatrve phonology is suggested. in this thesis in the introduction of parallel tiers of segments (or "autosegents"). This is shown, in the first chapter, to resolve certain formal and substantive problems in the current theory. A detailed analysis of Igbo, a tone language of Nigeria, is presented in autosegmental terms in Chapter Two, as well as a new analysis of the phenomenonvof "downstep" found in most African languages. In Chapter Three, these notions are develope. to account for stress and intonation patterns in English, and various accentual and non-accentual. systems are dealt with as ways of co-ordinating the tonal and syllabic tiers of autosegments. Work by G.N.Clements on vowel harmony is cited to support a more general account of autosegmental phonology. Chapter Four presents a hypothesis for The origin of autosegmental phonology, suggesting that the inherent geometry at the phonetic level is"autosegmentat", but that language acquisition will include the task of "de-autosegmentalization", which tends to collapse the multi- linear autosegmental geometry to a linear one at the lexical level.
    [Show full text]
  • PATTERN CONGRUITY in ILIANEN MANOBO PHONOLOGY Robert and Felicia Brichoux Summer Institute of Linguistics
    PATTERN CONGRUITY IN ILIANEN MANOBO PHONOLOGY Robert and Felicia Brichoux Summer Institute of Linguistics 0. Introduction 1. Segmental Phonemes 2. Syllable Patterns 3. Alternate Analyses 0. The segmental phonemics of Ilianen Manobo illustrate a problem of phonemicizing on the basis of pattern congruity. This is an attempt to fit all the phonetic material into a sym- metrical set of patterns based on the nonsuspect data. Involved in this problem are the interpretation of certain syllable pat- terns and the analysis of the phoneme n. 1. The segmental phonemes of Ilianen Manobo1 are con- sonants p, t, k, ?, b, d, g, cp, s, h, 1, r, m, n, ng, w, and y, and vowels i, e, a, and u. 2 1. 1 The consonant phonemes of Ilianen l\1anobo are des- cribed according to their manner of production: stops, frica- tives, liquids, nasals, and semivowels. 1 .11 Voiceless bilabial, dental, velar, glottal, and voiced bilabial, alveolar, and velar stops occur; all have unrelease,d I Ilianen Manobo is a Malayo-Polynesian language spoken in the interior of the prc·vince of Cotabato on the i~land of Mindanao, Philip- pines. The present paper is based on approximately twenty- months of 1ield work by l\1rs. Brichoux at periods between September, 1956, and August, 195!:!. This study was under the auspices of the Summer Insti- tute of Linguistics, in cooperation with the University of North Dakota. Chief informants were Mrs. Tigar Zacharias, a monolingual speaker about 35 years old; and Inter Mantinanggit and Latipa Panduan, girls about 17 years old, bilingual speakers of Manobo and English.
    [Show full text]
  • Linguistic Science and Its Classroom Reflections
    LINGUISTIC SCIENCE AND ITS CLASSROOM REFLECTIONS Mary Jane M. Norris University of Michigan This paper is an attempt to bring together the various as- sumptions, statements, findings, or other contributions gener - ally included within the scope of linguistic science that have a bearing on language teaching, and to show to some extent how they are reflected in the language classroom. These elements of linguistic science can be divided into the following five points: 1. The realization of the nature of language. a. Language is vocal. b. Language symbols are arbitrary. c. Language has system. d. Language is for communication. e. Language is made up of habits. f. There is a relation between a language and the cul- ture in which it is used. g. Languages change. h. No two languages have the same set of patterns of pronunciation, words, and syntax.' 2. The realization (assumption) that patterns of one's native language interfere with learning later the patterns of an- other language. 3. Methods of analyzing and describing languages. 4. Descriptions of some languages. 5. Techniques for comparison of two languages. These points with their reflections, or potential reflections, in the classroom follow. 1Redundancy might be added as a feature of language, a concept which has come to the fore through the work of Claude L. Shannon and W. Weaver, The hdatlieniatical Theory of Co))rtuunicatioii,Urb;lna: Uni - versity of Illinois Press, 1949. Waldo E. Sweet in "The Carrot on the Stick," editorial, Lai2,Suage Leamiig, 9. 1-2, 1959, mentions a use of redundancy, as fill-the-space exercises.
    [Show full text]
  • Generative Phonology: Its Origins, Its Principles, and Its Successors John Goldsmith and Bernard Laks
    Generative phonology: its origins, its principles, and its successors John Goldsmith and Bernard Laks Introduction The story of the rise of generative phonology, both in the United 1 States and abroad, is one of continuity and of rupture. That there 1 A lightly edited version of this paper has been rupture has been emphasized by commentators and histo- will appear in the Cambridge History of Linguistics, edited by Linda Waugh, rians alike, as also by the originators of generative phonology; the John Joseph and Monique Monville- continuity has been less clearly treated in the recorded history of this Burston. period. It will be our task in this chapter to sketch both of these sides of the story. But it is not an easy task even to decide where this story should begin, nor where it ends. The simple answer to the question as to where it begins is with Noam Chomsky’s efforts to describe the mor- 2 phophonemics of modern Hebrew , but the historical roots of gen- 2 Chomsky,Noam, 1951. Morphophone- erative phonology lie deeper and earlier, as we shall see. Where gen- mics of Modern Hebrew. Master’s thesis, Philadelphia: University of erative phonology ends is a much harder question to answer: should Pennsylvania the theories of phonological representations studied in the 1980s be considered generative phonology?—most phonologists would agree that they should: certainly from a methodological, epistemologi- cal or theoretical point of view, they share the flavor, the spirit, the mood of generative phonology; but many of the core questions asked in the 1980s had stronger historical roots in pre-generative than in generative phonology.
    [Show full text]
  • Encounters with Language
    Encounters with Language Charles J. Fillmore∗ University of California, Berkeley, and International Computer Science Institute First of all, I am overwhelmed and humbled by the honor the ACLExecutive Committee has shown me, an honor that should be shared by the colleagues and students I’ve been lucky enough to have around me this past decade-and-a-half while I’ve been engaged in the FrameNet Project at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley. I’ve been asked to say something about the evolution of the ideas behind the work with which I’ve been associated, so my remarks will be a bit more autobiographical than I might like. I’d like to comment on my changing views of what language is like, and how the facts of language can be represented. As I am sure the ACLExecutive Com- mittee knows, I have never been a direct participant in efforts in language engineering, but I have been a witness to, a neighbor of, and an indirect participant in some parts of it, and I have been pleased to learn that some of the resources my colleagues and I are building have been found by some researchers to be useful. I offer a record of my encounters with language and my changing views of what one ought to believe about language and how one might represent its properties. In the course of the narrative I will take note of changes I have observed over the past seven decades or so in both technical and conceptual tools in linguistics and language engineering.
    [Show full text]
  • English Verbs in Syntactic Structures
    Mark Arono English verbs in Syntactic Structures Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn (1820) 1 Introduction The formally inclined take comfort in the last two lines of Keats’s Ode on a Grecian Urn. We judge an analysis by its beauty, or elegance, or simplicity. In linguistics, there is no clearer demonstration of Keats’s maxim than the analysis of English verbs in Syntactic Structures (henceforth SS). I am not alone in my belief that the beauty of this analysis played a large part in leading the field to accept the truth of Chomsky’s claim that the description of human language calls for the use of transformations. The system of English verbs provides one of the core pieces of evidence in SS for the value of transformations in grammatical theory and description. In this article, I will review Chomsky’s analysis of English verbs and use it to partially re- construct the (largely implicit) view of morphology that lies behind it—most cen- trally, the role that the morpheme played in SS and just what the term morpheme meant in that work. I will explore the roots of this view in structuralist linguistics, especially in the morphological theory of Chomsky’s mentor, Zellig Harris. Chom- sky’s analysis of English verbs and their morphology might have been possible within another framework, but a deeper understanding of the assumptions that undergird it makes the analysis even more beautiful. In his preface, Chomsky described SS as a comparison of “three models for linguistic structure” (p.
    [Show full text]
  • Linguistic Society of America
    Linguistic Society of America English Verb Inflection Author(s): Bernard Bloch Source: Language, Vol. 23, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1947), pp. 399-418 Published by: Linguistic Society of America Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/410300 . Accessed: 08/02/2011 18:12 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=lsa. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Linguistic Society of America is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Language. http://www.jstor.org ENGLISH VERB INFLECTION BERNARD BLOCH YALEUNIVERSITY 1. INTRODUCTORY 1.1. The inflectionof verbsin present-daycolloquial English' has been described in many works-most clearly and exhaustively, perhaps, by Sweet, Palmer, Curme, Fries, Jespersen, and Hockett.2 In view of the number and fullness of these descriptions, no new treatment can hope to add any facts hitherto over- looked: at most, a new treatment may be able to arrange the known facts more systematically than has been done before, or in a way that will be more useful to other linguists.
    [Show full text]
  • Chapter 16: Mid-Century American Phonology: the Post-Bloomfieldians
    Chapter 16: Mid-century American phonology: the post-Bloomfieldians D. Robert Ladd Revised April 2018 [Corrected March 2019] Prepared for inclusion in the Oxford History of Phonology, edited by Elan Dresher and Harry van der Hulst. 1 Abstract From the early 1940s to the early 1960s, American phonology, led by Bloch, Trager, and Hockett, was remarkably monolithic. Its practitioners nominally followed Bloomfield, but in practice rejected his clearly expressed views by treating the elements of phonetic transcription (‘phones’) as an intermediate level of abstraction between the phoneme and the physical signal. They also accepted a strong version of what Hockett called ‘duality of patterning’, according to which individual utterances are simultaneously arrangements of phonemes and arrangements of meaningful units; this led to their insistence that phonemic analysis had to be carried out without ‘mixing levels’, i.e. without any reference to grammatical and lexical categories. Among other things, this principle made it difficult to deal insightfully with morphophonological regularities. This was perhaps the major source of disagreement between the post-Bloomfieldians and the generative phonologists who followed; by contrast, reliance on phonetic transcription represents a major source of continuity between the two. 2 16.1 Introduction For about 25 years in the middle of the 20th century – roughly 1940-1965 – American linguistics was dominated by a remarkably uniform theory of phonology, which I will refer to as ‘post-Bloomfieldian phonemics’. The theory took on its canonical shape in the 1940s among a group of scholars who identified themselves as followers of Leonard Bloomfield, and was given textbook presentation in the two major introductory texts of the period (Gleason 1955a/1961 and Hockett 1958).
    [Show full text]
  • LINGUISTIC THEORY in AMERICA Second Edition
    LINGUISTIC THEORY IN AMERICA Second Edition Frederick J. Newmeyer DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON SEATTLE, WASHINGTON ACADEMIC PRESS, INC. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers San Diego New York Berkeley Boston London Sydney Tokyo Toronto COPYRIGHT © 1986 BY ACADEMIC PRESS. INC ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE REPRODUCED OR TRANSMITTED IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY MEANS. ELECTRONIC OR MECHANICAL. INCLUDING PHOTOCOPY, RECORDING. OR ANY INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL SYSTEM. WITHOUT PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM THE PUBLISHER. ACADEMIC PRESS, INC. 1250 Sixth Avenue, San Diego, California 92101 United Kingdom Edition published bx ACADEMIC PRESS INC. (LONDON) LTD. 24-28 Oval Road, London NW1 7DX Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Newmeyer, Frederick J. Linguistic theory in America. Bibliography: p. Includes indexes. 1. Generative grammar-History. 2. Linguistics- United States-History. I. Title. P158.N4 1986 415 86-10802 ISBN 0-12-517151-X (hardcover) (alk. paper) ISBN 0-12-517152-8 (paperback) (alk. paper) PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 88 89 90 91 92 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 Preface to the Second Edition Though I had no way of knowing it at the time, I wrote the first edition of Linguistic Theory in America during the only major lull in syntactic research be• tween the mid 1950s and the present. As I was preparing the book in the late 1970s, it had become unquestionably clear that generative semantics had collapsed, yet no other worked-out alternative to the Extended Standard Theory had presented itself as a pole of opposition to it.
    [Show full text]